tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post114234133116485380..comments2014-12-12T05:29:46.343-05:00Comments on Debunking Christianity: Another introductionDr. Hector Avaloshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10840869326406664177noreply@blogger.comBlogger36125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-69937757171435239712007-03-09T16:17:00.000-05:002007-03-09T16:17:00.000-05:00Obviously, your wife is a loving Christian who is ...Obviously, your wife is a loving Christian who is devoted to her family and knows her bible. Or else she would probably be listening to the false advice of those people mentioned in your post. Biblically, if you choose to leave her then she can be free to remarry again and not be found in adultery but if you choose to stay then she is to stay also. Isn't that balanced! If people really studied the doctrines and advice in the bible for themselves, then what all the misinformed people say wouldn't have such an effect.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1167405694331588022006-12-29T10:21:00.000-05:002006-12-29T10:21:00.000-05:00Well, I'll be! (as we say in the South)Good to see...Well, I'll be! (as we say in the South)<BR/><BR/>Good to see you are hale and hearty, amigo. I hope your family is, as well.<BR/><BR/>Thanks for the holiday greeting and the backtrack (you knew I would!!) to the site you are posting on.<BR/><BR/>I was getting a bit complacent, thanks for the booster shot! :D<BR/><BR/>See you around!<BR/><BR/>-JDjdlongmirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15427095709766850092noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1147430183605685172006-05-12T06:36:00.000-04:002006-05-12T06:36:00.000-04:00This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.Joshnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1145500148578923202006-04-19T22:29:00.000-04:002006-04-19T22:29:00.000-04:00People can carry on philosophical and theological ...People can carry on philosophical and theological debates forever, but since most of us are not philosophers or theologians, and even they come to conflicting conclusions, the practical bottom line is plausibility. Neither side can prove their position, so we must each ask ourselves: Does it seem likely that Jesus was the son of God, and does it seem likely that accepting that proposition as the truth is a ticket into eternal bliss, and not accepting it is a ticket to eternal hellfire?<BR/><BR/>Not only does Christianity not seem plausible to me, what does seem plausible is that Christianity, particularly the hellfire version, is false, born out of history and human psychology and empire-building and clerics' need for steady employment, as well as a human need to try to make sense out of things before we had better ways of understanding the world. I respect Christians, they are doing the best they can, as were those who came up with the religion in the first place, but we've ditched ancient medicine, technology, social structure, political structure, etc. and it's time to seek new, better, more rational answers to humanity's troubles and aspirations.<BR/><BR/>The infinitely drawn-out debate over Christianity vs. atheism has more to do with anxiety than with productive dialogue. Christianity, like all other ancient religion, doesn't pass the plausibility test. <BR/><BR/>KenKen B.http://www.blogger.com/profile/08333533606097768895noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1143062747182764942006-03-22T16:25:00.000-05:002006-03-22T16:25:00.000-05:00People seem to get into a lot of trouble when argu...People seem to get into a lot of trouble when arguing about the big, abstract, speculative concepts such as "God." Think how different the conversation might be if the starting point, instead, were simple, everday concepts such as free will and personal spirituality. It's not my place to go into detail here, but those who are interested can find a more complete discussion of this approach and its ramifications at www.explorerationalfaith.net.Rodgehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15214989656522109660noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142528673879733642006-03-16T12:04:00.000-05:002006-03-16T12:04:00.000-05:00sandalstraps, thanks for the reply. A few points—...sandalstraps, thanks for the reply. A few points—<BR/><BR/><I>I chose the Christian faith because I find the teachings and example of Jesus to be quite helpful. </I> But you just pick and choose with sayings and examples to follow. Those you like, you follow, those you don’t you ignore. I don’t see any Christians following Luke 6:27-35 to the letter! It is an “ideal” but never implemented. <BR/><BR/>Of course, we cannot attest that theses are the actual sayings of Jesus, and most, if not all, were common sayings of traveling philosophers of the time. Odd that in the Pauline writings, he only quotes Jesus once—that being the Eucharist. You would think the single greatest contributor to the New Testament would equally find Jesus’ teachings to be helpful. He did not.<BR/><BR/><I> It seems intellectually dishonest to posit the existence of a God with no description of that God. But having found each description of God to be in some way flawed, and having also had a kind of experience of God, it was the recourse left to me. </I> I’ll confess, this always does seem a bit of a cop-out.<BR/><BR/>What I see is the theist offering certain propositions of their God, such as having a personal experience, or that love triumphs, compassion triumphs, etc. But when I start to discuss those concepts, and those conclusions, the theist backs away with a “we can’t define God.” Fair enough. Then don’t start off with definitions of God. If you can’t, you can’t. For all you know, God DOES hold to hate over love.<BR/><BR/>I saw it emphasized as follows, and it has always stuck with me:<BR/><BR/>Theist: God is square.<BR/>Atheist: So God has four sides and four right angles?<BR/>Theist: God’s squareness is not like our squareness. We can’t understand his definition of ‘Square.’<BR/>Atheist: Then why say, ‘God is square’ in the first place?<BR/><BR/>Further, if God is actually providing information through personal experiences, this should give us at least a miniscule, basic understanding of God. Unless these personal experiences are totally one-sided—i.e. completely human.<BR/><BR/>We start to learn math by counting numbers. Later we add the ideas of addition, multiplication, fractions, algebra, calculus, etc. I have had the chance to read doctoral dissertations by Ph.D.’s in mathematics. Hardly understood a word of it, since they consist primarily of formulas. But as much as that was over my head, there was still one basic truth. 1+1 still equaled 2. (Yes, I understand in some quantum equations this is not true. Understand the analogy, please.)<BR/><BR/>What I see are theists claiming that God’s math formulas are so complex, we should toss the whole idea of describing God out the window. Why? Why not the basics? If God is communicating to humans, He may have difficult describing <I>i</I> (the square root of -1) but surely he could communicate 1+1=2. Or even counting. <BR/><BR/>Further, you use words, such as “love” and “compassion” as if they have meaning when applied to a God. Apparently as some basic level, there IS a way in which we can understand and utilize these words.DagoodShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04557451438888314932noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142469005928765052006-03-15T19:30:00.000-05:002006-03-15T19:30:00.000-05:00Bruce,The nuts thing came in through me, because I...Bruce,<BR/><BR/>The nuts thing came in through me, because I thought that it was obvious that the best explanation for someone making such a novel claim absent any confirming evidence is that they are out of their mind. If that is not the claim you (or Carl Sagan) is making, then I apologize.<BR/><BR/>I still, however, think that positing the existence of God is not sufficiently like positing the existence of a dragon, but that is nothing new.Sandalstrapshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303641009581382217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142468850048942602006-03-15T19:27:00.000-05:002006-03-15T19:27:00.000-05:00Dagoods,I don't pick which God to go with. I say t...Dagoods,<BR/><BR/>I don't pick which God to go with. I say that all concepts of God are "empty." That is to say, assuming there is a God, all concepts of God, by being human concepts of God, fail to describe God as God.<BR/><BR/>I chose the Christian faith because it is the religious tradition in which I had and continue to have my experience of God. I chose the Christian faith because I find the teachings and example of Jesus to be quite helpful. But in doing so in no way to I imply that it is anything like the one true faith, or that it (to the extent that one can say that there is a single entity which can be called Christianity making a single set of assertions) is completely true.<BR/><BR/>I think, particularly with your critique of anthropomorphic concepts of God, that you would love the ancient Greek philosoher Xenophanes' critique of religion. I hate to shamelessly plug my own work, but my treatment of it can be found <A HREF="http://sandalstraps.blogspot.com/2006/01/xenophanes-critique-of-religion.html" REL="nofollow">here</A>.<BR/><BR/>The best way to answer your critique of Gellman's BEE STING would be to say that perhaps he would respond with something like this:<BR/><BR/>You are right that God is deliberately undefined. This is because, if there is such a thing as God, then God is beyond the human ability to define. Each desciption of God is at best a poor participation in the Platonic form of the divine.<BR/><BR/>I'll grant that, as a philosopher friend of mine constantly says, that's a little too "squishy" for most people. But I think that if we grant the possiblility of an actually existing God, and if we grant something non-trivial by the term God, then the actually existing God is not best described by anything we have at our disposal.<BR/><BR/>I know this leaves with little to attack, and I'm sorry for that. It seems intellectually dishonest to posit the existence of a God with no description of that God. But having found each description of God to be in some way flawed, and having also had a kind of experience of God, it was the recourse left to me.<BR/><BR/>I'm sure you'll say that I should just drop the idea of God altogether, but I already tried that, and trust me, it didn't work. I'm glad that you have found some freedom from religion, and it didn't cost you your sense of meaning or purpose. But when I went down that road more was lost than gained.<BR/><BR/>There are so many comments here that I really can't fish through them all, so sorry if there was something important that I left out.Sandalstrapshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303641009581382217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142445352569487022006-03-15T12:55:00.000-05:002006-03-15T12:55:00.000-05:00paul manata, debates shift all the time. Differen...paul manata, debates shift all the time. Different points at different times can be made, with different examples. What I meant was that contradictions can include a direct contradiction (A = Not A) or can be inferred from the failure to point out an extremely relevant fact. Not simply a minor difference in description. I apologize if this confused you.<BR/><BR/>Using the David Census still and incorporating your male/female differences, it would look like this:<BR/><BR/>Male: President Bush and King David entered the party at 9 p.m., and Bush forced David to blow a bomb, killing 100,000 people.<BR/>Female: Saddam Hussein and King David entered the party, both wearing black tuxedoes, and Saddam forced David to blow a bomb, killing 100,000 people.<BR/><BR/>(Since God and Satan are enemies, I replaced them with equal enemies, to demonstrate the difference.)<BR/><BR/>A policeman, lawyer, or even lay person is going to wonder how the man failed to notice Hussein and Bush working together, <I>regardless</I> of the time, as well as the woman failing to notice the same thing, <I>regardless</I> of what they are wearing. I am sure, within your first hand knowledge, you realize that policemen would inquire for more information.<BR/><BR/>What is most likely to have happened is that the man or woman received their knowledge second-hand or third-hand, and is therefore unreliable. Contradictions are not always intentional. Some of the best intentioned people can be wrong, due to wrong information provided. <BR/><BR/>paul manata: <I> Well, evolution doesn't seem likely to me.<BR/><BR/>What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. </I> Sauce? These aren’t even in the same food group! Evolution involves the study of empirical data, observation, biology, paleontology, chemistry, genetics, and countless sub-fields. Which involve theories and hypothesis, and falsibility, and prediction.<BR/><BR/>Contradictions in an ancient text involves history, textual criticism, higher criticism, archeology, anthropology, study of ancient religions, paleography, language study, a whole different ball of wax. Primarily the difficult is inability to test a single individual who lived 2500 years ago. We can view societies as a whole (to some extent) but not one author.<BR/><BR/>Perhaps, though, if you view this as “sauce” you can provide a methodology, similar to the scientific method, in which we can determine contradictions in the Bible, or non-contradictions?DagoodShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04557451438888314932noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142445252625096062006-03-15T12:54:00.000-05:002006-03-15T12:54:00.000-05:00sandalstraps – nicely written responses. But all ...sandalstraps – nicely written responses. But all theists subscribe to this view. The only possible exception being rational deists. Fundamentalists hold to the personal experience of God. It may be in addition to other claims, but it is still part of the belief. Muslims, Mormons, Jews, all hold to a personal experience with God as verification of His existence.<BR/><BR/>How did you pick which God to go with? How can you, if based on personal experience, eliminate any God? As humans, we still use our reason. You picked love over hate. Why? Where is it written that God must be a God of love? We see both in the world. We see people that normally love commit acts of hate, and those that normally hate commit acts of love. Couldn’t God be a God of Hate, in which an occasional love act slips through?<BR/><BR/>You have made a reasoned and rationale choice to pick “good” things as applying to God. Yet you recognize the bad things still exist. Why? <BR/><BR/>My thought is that it is your humanity shining through your theism. (Sorry! :-) ) You recognize that hate, and fear and prejudice are “bad” and therefore remove them from the picture as far as a God is concerned. You recognize that the inerrant, literalist, Biblist God is incorrect, yet still cling to the idea of one. <BR/><BR/>If such a God gives you “meaning” I feel almost criminal arguing against such a position. Some day I will share the fear of despondency upon looking at the path of atheism I felt, that never came. I have just as much meaning now as before.<BR/><BR/>But shouldn’t such a creature, by necessity, have more impact than people’s intuition? A “sixth sense” if you will that it must exist?<BR/><BR/>Interesting that you bring up societies all creating gods. Yes, most do. And those gods look exactly like the humans that created them. Saying that humans have made them up for years, does not mean they exist, of course. In fact, it harms the proposition, because they all vary so much from culture to culture. How come the gods only know as much as the people they are gods over? 4000 years ago, the gods moved the sun across the sky. Now, the gods move the earth about the sun. Why? Did the Gods change? No, we learned more.<BR/><BR/>Why did the gods used to get so angry every fall, creating winter? But now, the gods just set the earth in motion, explaining the seasons. <BR/><BR/>The problem, I see, in bringing up all those cultures, with all those varying Gods, is that it demonstrates humans are capable of making up false gods. (Remember, of the 100,000 different types of gods, 99,999 think your brand of theism is a false god.) If they can make up 99,999 false ones, why not all of them? Including yours?<BR/><BR/>The problem I see with BEE STING is the deliberate lack of definition of “God.” Some people experience a Mormon God, which, by the definition of that God, eliminate the possibility of others experiencing an Aztec God. Others experience a Greek God, which eliminates Jesus as a deity experience, and so on.<BR/><BR/>This is a broad stroke, in an attempt to avoid the details. Within the details, we see that each person is NOT experiencing the same entity when they say “God” and, in fact, would argue that other’s experiences are deluded or self-inflicted and false.<BR/><BR/>If we took every experience of God claimed, wrote them down, and then handed the list to every theist that experienced them, asking them to cross off the “false” experiences of the other theists, how many would we have left?DagoodShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04557451438888314932noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142444908146280262006-03-15T12:48:00.000-05:002006-03-15T12:48:00.000-05:00Sandalstraps, I think you are forgetting the main ...Sandalstraps, I think you are forgetting the main point of my first post: the burden of proof falls on the believer. From what I can tell, you are trying to shift that burden somewhat by using an appeal to tradition.<BR/><BR/>Also, you stated that "we also can't say that God's non-existence is demonstrated by our inability to prove God" and I pointed out that non-existence is indeed the default state and further, if we had to go around proving every negative then we would never get anywhere. So yes, we can say that something does not exist if we can't prove that it does.<BR/><BR/>I was never arguing against "your proof" for the existence of God. When I said "your inability to prove that God exists does mean that God doesn't exist" I meant believers in general, not you in particular. And it was directly pertaining to your statement quoted above, not to any proof you put forth for the existence of God. Again, my whole point was about the burden of proof and why atheists do not have to prove a negative. <BR/><BR/>My dragon analogy is from Carl Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World. It was used to illuminate the burden of proof concept. Why should we believe that there is a dragon in my garage if there is no way to prove its existence other then through me? The implication being that we should not believe in any god (who according to you, cannot be proved to exist either) until we have proof? You countered that "the person positing the existence of God has more to back up their claim than the person positing the existence of a garage-kept dragon." And I countered that appeal to tradition was not a justifiable argument and so they do not have any more to back up their claims than I do about my dragon.<BR/><BR/>I never used the word "insane" in any of the above discussion. As I stated earlier, there are plenty of explanations as to why people continue to believe in god/gods. One of those could be based on some sort of insanity, but since most people I know who believe in God aren't insane, I don't think I would use the insanity argument to generalize belief. There are plenty of books out there on why people believe. But that is a different discussion. Again, my main point was that the burden of proof falls on the believer, you don't need to prove a negative to prove non-existence and further, you can't appeal to tradition to shift that burden.<BR/><BR/>P.S. I see that you have posted even more while I was working on this post, but in general I see nothing new in your post, you are still playing the same cards, appeal to tradition and numbers.<BR/><BR/><I>But reasonable people can also conclude, on the basis of religious experience (which despite the testimonials here, is not always a negative) that using God as an operational hypothesis makes the experience of life a much better one for them.</I><BR/><BR/>Of course they can. As I mentioned, there are many explanations for why people believe in God. One of them is surely to bring a sense of order to a seemingly chaotic universe. But even if everyone on the planet believed in God, that doesn't shift the burden of proof one bit, which was my whole point.<BR/><BR/>And again with the "nuts" and "quacks" implications. Sagan surely did not mean to imply that believers are insane and neither did I, though I do find it interesting that you think that I did. I could have used a million different other analogies, even from different religious beliefs that you would find outrageous. Would you think that they were insane as well?Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10938632596842788425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142440817481378352006-03-15T11:40:00.000-05:002006-03-15T11:40:00.000-05:00Incidentally, if anyone (particularly those workin...Incidentally, if anyone (particularly those working on any kind of degree in philosophy) is interested in a critical treatment of Anselm's ontological argument, <A HREF="http://sandalstraps.blogspot.com/2006/02/anselm-gaunilo-and-god-after-listening.html" REL="nofollow"> here's mine.</A>Sandalstrapshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303641009581382217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142440285002294432006-03-15T11:31:00.000-05:002006-03-15T11:31:00.000-05:00Bruce,Your insistence on proof for the existence o...Bruce,<BR/><BR/>Your insistence on proof for the existence of God is admirable. As a religious person I wish that more people had it. However, your willingness to discount as "proof" all things which do not fit into a very narrow definition of proof speaks to a kind of radical skepticism which, while intellectually defensible, ultimately leads one to be able to make very many claims.<BR/><BR/>This is particularly true when you claim that someone who uses God as a sort of operational hypothesis rather than an ontological necessity has still - even though they have not yet made a single argument for the necessity of God's existence, commited an evidential fallacy.<BR/><BR/>My argument against your analogy is that the beliefs which you said were analogous to a belief in God were novel claims held by few if any existing people, while a belief in and experience of God is a normal claim held by many people.<BR/><BR/>It certainly does not follow of necessity that God exist just because people believe in God, which is why I made that concession from the onset of our discussion.<BR/><BR/>Your claim<BR/><BR/><EM>But the actual numbers don't mean anything. 99,999,999 out of 100,000,000 people believing in something doesn't make that thing any more real/true than only 1 person believing in it</EM><BR/><BR/>is perfectly true, but also fails to speak to my point. I did not say that any number of people believeing in God could, by itself, demonstrate the necessity of God's existence. But I did say that belief in God is, by virtue of shared experience, much less novel or insane than belief in your dragon, or any other non-empirically evidenced claim.<BR/><BR/>As for arguments from experience, I bring them up not to <EM>prove</EM> that God exists, but to explain why <EM>I</EM> believe in God. Arguments from experience are by no means a slam dunk case. The best debate I've seen on the subject comes in the form of two essays which you might find interesting. <BR/><BR/>The first is <EM>From Experience to God</EM> by Jerome I. Gellman, a philosopher from Ben-Gurion University, Israel. In it he appeals to two creatively titled principles:<BR/><BR/>1. Best Explanation of Experience (BEE) - which can be rendered roughly thus (the following italicized sections are paraphrases of Gellman's arguments, since we won't want the whole essay pasted into a single comment):<BR/><BR/><EM>If a person, S, has experience, E, which seems to be of a particular object, O, then, everything else being equal, the best explanation of S's having E is that S has experience O, rather than something else or nothing at all.</EM><BR/><BR/>He then applies that to claims of experiencing God, which may rest on a weak analogy (when people claim to experience God are they having a claim which can be reasonably compared to experiencing, say, a tree, or some other empirically observable object?).<BR/><BR/>2. Strength in Numbers Greatness (STING) - which can be rendered roughly thus:<BR/><BR/><EM>The presumption created by BEE that a seeming experience of a particular object, O, is, in fact, an experience of O is strengthened by the more "sightings" of O and the more variable the circumstances under which O has been sighted.</EM><BR/><BR/>He applies this to experiences of God by arguing roughly thus:<BR/><BR/><EM>There have been many accounts of people who claim to have experienced God, occuring under highly variable circumstances, which strengthens the claim that they have actually experienced God.</EM><BR/><BR/>The argument is a bit more subtle than that, but that was the gist of it.<BR/><BR/>The immediate problem with the argument can be phrased in the form of 2 questions:<BR/><BR/>1. Is God sufficiently like an object - particularly an empirically observable object?<BR/><BR/>2. Is an experience of God sufficiently like an experience of an empirically observable object?<BR/><BR/>In other words, do the rules which apply to ordinary experience also apply to a kind of divine or sacred encounter?<BR/><BR/>The second essay is a rebuttal to the original essay. It is <EM>Who's Afraid of a BEE STING: A Reply to Gellman</EM> by Henry Samuel Levinson of UNC Greensboro, and Jonathan W. Malino of Guilford College. They attack Gellman by arguing that if there are no intersubjective tests for the veridicality of an experience, or if such tests would probably not produce a positive result, then we have good reason to doubt the account of the experience.<BR/><BR/>They argue similarly to my own arguments that we have, per Gellman's BEE STING, reason to believe a person has actually experienced, say, a tree; and reason to doubt that a person has experienced, say, a flying saucer.<BR/><BR/>This is similar to your own comparing of belief in God with belief in a garage-bound dragon. I think that Levinston and Malino have pointed to a weakness in Gellman's argument, but they too fail to appreciate the magnitude of claims for an experience of God.<BR/><BR/>Again, no matter how many people claim to experince God, it is not manifest from that that God actually exists. But neither is it manifest from that that their claims are as easily ignored as being abducted by aliens or having a garage-bound dragon, as such claims are novel rather than common.<BR/><BR/>To your own insistence on "proof," I say that you are entitled to it, and are correct in anticipating that it will not be forthcoming. God is simply not an empirically observable entity, and so per your evidential expectations it will never be evident that God exists.<BR/><BR/>But radical skepticism on the grounds of the absence of empirical evidence leads one to be able to make few affirmative claims about the universe. As David Hume argued, there are no empirical grounds on which to assume even the law of causality. Just because the sun rose (understanding, of course, that the sun does not literally rise in the sky, but is only perceived by us to do so on the basis of our limited perspective) yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and on and on; it does not follow from that that the sun will do the same thing tomorrow. There is no empirical evidence which one can bring to bear when predicting the future.<BR/><BR/>Sometimes, then, we need an operational hypothesis. Of course, not all operational hypotheses are created equal. Positing that past events are good predictors of future events in most cases is a fair amount safer of a bet than positing God as an operationa hypothesis. After all, the phenomenon in the natural universe can - despite the protests of the ID nuts - be explained just as well without positing any sort of a God.<BR/><BR/>But I use God as an operational hypothesis because it brings order to my chaos, meaning to my existential disorientation. And, despite your attempt to render faith a fallacy (as though it were a logical argument) I am in good company in doing so.<BR/><BR/>My faith is not binding on you, as I readily conceed that reasonable people can conclude on the basis of all available data that God's existence is certainly not manifest. But reasonable people can also conclude, on the basis of religious experience (which despite the testimonials here, is not <EM>always</EM> a negative) that using God as an operational hypothesis makes the experience of life a much better one for them.<BR/><BR/>Again, I readily concede that this doe snot "prove" God. Other explanations can be used to describe my own experience and the experience of the billions and billions of other people who claim to have had some sort of meaningful encounter with the <EM>sacred</EM>. But that does not make us <EM>all</EM> nuts or quacks. That certainly does not make us like your hypothetical dragon keeper.Sandalstrapshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303641009581382217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142440206989382032006-03-15T11:30:00.000-05:002006-03-15T11:30:00.000-05:00Paul M,Do you care to point me to an already-writt...Paul M,<BR/><BR/>Do you care to point me to an already-written harmonization, or quickly write one yourself, of the early years, the genealogy, or the resurrection story, of Jesus? A non-contradictory listing of the facts involved in all/any?<BR/><BR/>Thanks!<BR/>DanielDanielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04129382545589470620noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142440001480203752006-03-15T11:26:00.000-05:002006-03-15T11:26:00.000-05:00DagoodS,I just joined the blog as well and haven't...DagoodS,<BR/>I just joined the blog as well and haven't put together a suitable bio just yet, but will be soon, for my first post. Nice to meet you.<BR/><BR/>exbeliever,<BR/>I can relate perfectly to the situation with your wife and yourself. My wife just confided in me last night that she is beginning to doubt Christianity in general. I don't know how far her doubt will take her, but I encouraged her to take her time and think and read and not feel rushed into complete abandonment of anything, as emotional appeals are nearly the entire substance of religious conversion and rational thinking ought to be the basis of deconversions.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, I just saw that first comment and had to write you as a kindred spirit -- we were both fundies at marriage, I lost faith about a year ago (completely, had been doubting seriously for a while).Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04129382545589470620noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142430699572057352006-03-15T08:51:00.000-05:002006-03-15T08:51:00.000-05:00Bruce,Sorry about the evangelical remark. Having l...Bruce,<BR/><BR/>Sorry about the evangelical remark. Having looked at your profile I see that you claim to have never been religious.<BR/><BR/>That remark was, as best I can tell, my first <EM>real</EM> fallacy, a hasty generalization. The argument would go something like this:<BR/><BR/>P1: Most people at Debunking Christianity are deconverted evangelicals.<BR/><BR/>P2: Bruce is at Debunking Christianity.<BR/><BR/>C: Bruce must be a deconverted evangelical.<BR/><BR/>That is a hasty generalization unwarrented by either premise, and I quickly found disconfirming evidence for my false claim. Sorry to paint you with that brush.<BR/><BR/>The gist of my point remains. Your willingness to insist that most people are simply insane because they look at the same data as you and arrive at a different conclusion speaks to the sort of arrogance that most people get from believeing that God agrees with them rather than from believing that there is no God.<BR/><BR/>And your willingness to argue that my <EM>proof</EM> for the existence of God is fallacious when it does not even present itself as a proof speaks to your making the same sort of hasty generalization about me as I just made about you.<BR/><BR/>That said, I do sincerely apologize for the generalization. It was unwarrented, and I am without excuse. It was simply a lazy argument.Sandalstrapshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303641009581382217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142430285275454732006-03-15T08:44:00.000-05:002006-03-15T08:44:00.000-05:00A fallacy comes when you draw conclusions which ar...A fallacy comes when you draw conclusions which are unwarrented from your premises. As I never claimed that tradition <EM>proves</EM> that God exists, nor did I claim that such a proof is possible, I have committed no fallacy.<BR/><BR/>Alas, you continue to make the same weak analogy, unless you intend to argue that most people at most points in history are as deluded as the person who posits an invisible dragon. Such a reckless an unwarrented assertion, regardless of your conviction with your atheism, would make it difficult for me to take you seriously.<BR/><BR/>The problem that I have with many of my fellow Christians is their willingness to dismiss the perspectives of others based solely on their own convictions. This leads to a kind of absulutist triumphalism which rightly turns off many people to the Christian faith. It makes many evangelical Christians into arrogant moralists who assume that they are right by virute merely of their beliefs, and that everyone else is wrong.<BR/><BR/>It would disappoint me greatly to find that you are such an evangelical atheist that you are willing to say that everyone who believes in God is, by virtue of their belief, crazy. And if you say that belief in God is sufficiently like positing an invisible dragon in your garage, that is, in fact, your claim.<BR/><BR/>I did not come here to convert you, or prove to you that God exists. But I also did not come here to have you resort to the worst sort of evangelical arguments to convert me. Unless you really believe that no reasonable person could possibly believe in God, then while tradition does not <EM>prove</EM> God, it certainly speaks to some sort of reality behind a very collective experience.<BR/><BR/>Belief in God is a very common phenomenon, while belief in your dragon seems, at best, novel and particular to you. The commonality of that belief, which crosses religious and cultural borders, speaks to its presense in our collective unconscious. Again, do not mistake this for a <EM>proof</EM> of God, as no such proof will be forthcoming.<BR/><BR/>If you persist in your nonsensical analogy which is at best insulting and patronizing to everyone who has ever on the basis of experience (and especially shared experience) believed in any unseen deity, then I will have to conclude that your evangelicalism merely changed its belief structure.Sandalstrapshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303641009581382217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142387159425402932006-03-14T20:45:00.000-05:002006-03-14T20:45:00.000-05:00In the case of God, the person making the assertio...<I>In the case of God, the person making the assertion has a great deal more on their side than their isolated experience of an improbable claim. They have with them each person who has ever had some experience of God in the course of human history.</I><BR/><BR/>I understand the argument, but this is an evidential fallacy. Tradition cannot be used as proof. There are many other explanations as to why so many people have believed in the various gods throughout history. But the actual numbers don't mean anything. 99,999,999 out of 100,000,000 people believing in something doesn't make that thing any more real/true than only 1 person believing in it. And of course, appealing to a personal "experience of God" is another fallacy as well.<BR/><BR/><I>I think that it does say that the person positing the existence of God has more to back up their claim than the person positing the existence of a garage-kept dragon.</I><BR/><BR/>Unless you've got some actual proof for that assertion, I'm afraid you're getting burned by my dragon.Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10938632596842788425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142384973615234702006-03-14T20:09:00.000-05:002006-03-14T20:09:00.000-05:00Johnny,I never said "logic leads people to Christi...Johnny,<BR/><BR/>I never said "logic leads people to Christianity." I said that to leave Christianity is to leave good reasoning. There's a difference. if you can't grasp whjat you read then at least don't make your posts public, it looks sad.<BR/><BR/>Oh, and how about that debate.<BR/><BR/>Dagoods,<BR/><BR/>I never meant that they didn;t care. I meant they wouldn't think contradiction. Also, and I have first hand knowledge, they are not bothered by some information that is left out. A man simply does not think like a woman. Women will "see" all sorts of things differently simply because of a conceptual scheme that allows her to "see" more.<BR/><BR/>ANyway, you didn't deal with the main point that I made, which was that you shifted the debate.<BR/><BR/>Your only response was an autobiographical remark, based on ignorant conjecture, i.e., "It doesn't seem likely to me that...."<BR/><BR/>Well, evolution doesn't seem likely to me.<BR/><BR/>What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.Paul Manatahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11250370621742484257noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142381226355228052006-03-14T19:07:00.000-05:002006-03-14T19:07:00.000-05:00I certainly get your point, but I think that you m...I certainly get your point, but I think that you may be missing mine. Not too many people claim that aliens have abducted them, yet in nearly every culture many, many people have some experience of God. While this does not demonstrate that God exists of necessity, nor does it entirely shift the burden of proof to atheists, it does make your analogy a weak one.<BR/><BR/>In the case of God, the person making the assertion has a great deal more on their side than their isolated experience of an improbable claim. They have with them each person who has ever had some experience of God in the course of human history.<BR/><BR/>Again, I do not think that this "proves" God beyond the ability of reasonable people to doubt God's existence. But I think that it does say that the person positing the existence of God has more to back up their claim than the person positing the existence of a garage-kept dragon.Sandalstrapshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303641009581382217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142370714125313902006-03-14T16:11:00.000-05:002006-03-14T16:11:00.000-05:00But the fallacy of that argument goes both ways. J...<I>But the fallacy of that argument goes both ways. Just as we can't say that God's existence is demonstrated by our inability to disprove God, we also can't say that God's non-existence is demonstrated by our inability to prove God.</I><BR/><BR/>You are forgetting one important distinction between the two; who has the burden of proof? Atheists don't have to prove God's non-existence because they don't have the burden of proof. <BR/><BR/>Would you accept my belief that aliens are abducting me every night without some credible proof that I am being abducted? How about if I said an invisible dragon lived in my garage? Oh, and by the way, because of it's magical powers, you can't detect it's existence in any way, you just have to take my word for it.<BR/><BR/>Get the point? The person making the assertion has the burden of proof. And until there is proof, then we get to treat the assertion as like "it doesn't exist" or "it never happened". If this weren't the case, then progress would come to a standstill because we would not only have to proof that everything real exists but also that everything not real doesn't exist, for which there are an infinite number of possibilities.<BR/><BR/>So yes, your inability to prove that God exists does mean that God doesn't exist, unless you are also willing to give me my invisible dragon?Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10938632596842788425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142369239494337982006-03-14T15:47:00.000-05:002006-03-14T15:47:00.000-05:00I've always maintained that one has to give up goo...<I>I've always maintained that one has to give up good reasoning when he gives up Christianity.</I><BR/><BR/>Pot. Kettle. Black.Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10938632596842788425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142368960832003972006-03-14T15:42:00.000-05:002006-03-14T15:42:00.000-05:00exbeliever,Forgot to answer half of your question....exbeliever,<BR/><BR/>Forgot to answer half of your question. You said:<BR/><BR/><EM>Perhaps you would be interested in explaining why believing in a god is any more reasonable than believing in an inerrant text of Scripture.</EM><BR/><BR/>To that I say very simply that the belief in inerrancy of scripture is obviously refuted by the presense of contradictions in the scriptural text, as well as by the presense of historical errors.<BR/><BR/>God's existence is not as obviously false.<BR/> <BR/>I won't say that anyone should <EM>believe</EM> in God simply because God can't be refuted - that wouldn't follow. Arguments from ignorance, such as <BR/><BR/><EM>We don't <B>know</B> that God doesn't exist, so God must exist</EM><BR/><BR/>are obviously fallacious.<BR/><BR/>But the fallacy of that argument goes both ways. Just as we can't say that God's existence is demonstrated by our inability to disprove God, we also can't say that God's non-existence is demonstrated by our inability to prove God.<BR/><BR/>That sets up my argument from experience in the previous comment.Sandalstrapshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303641009581382217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142362774909081852006-03-14T13:59:00.000-05:002006-03-14T13:59:00.000-05:00Intuition, personal religious experience, and all ...Intuition, personal religious experience, and all sorts of other "non-rational" but not irrational claims.<BR/><BR/>Faith in God is not principally about belief in propositions, but rather about experience of a personal nature which fills life with meaning.<BR/><BR/>The best arguments against this view of faith include:<BR/><BR/>1. It is subjective rather than objective, and as such is binding only on ther person who has the experience.<BR/><BR/>2. It represents a sort of "vital lie." A vital lie is a belief which is held out of emotional necessity rather than on the bsis of empirical evidence.<BR/><BR/>The vital lie argument is most interesting, because two different (bad) conclusions can be reached from it. The first is that all beliefs which are held for this reason are invalid, because somthing is not true simply because we need it to be true. The second is that all beliefs which are held for this reason are valid, because it cannot be the case that the universe is structured in such a way that our funadmental needs are incapable of being met.<BR/><BR/>The argument from subjectivity is a better one. Sinmply because I have an experience of something which I identify as God does not mean that:<BR/><BR/>a.) I have <EM>actually</EM> had an experience of God, or<BR/><BR/>b.) anyone else could have an experience of God.<BR/><BR/>My experience which I interpret as a kind of religious experience which points to God does not demonstrate that there is a God. But it did introduce me to a way of life which worked a great deal better for me.<BR/><BR/>Every rational proof for the existence of God which I studied as a philosophy major failed for various reasons. Either they contained logical fallacies, as in the case of teleological arguments (which rest on a weal analogy - God as a cosmic watchmaker; the natural world as a kind of intricate timepiece); or they started with unproveable axiomatic premises, as in ontological arguments; or for some combination of the two.<BR/><BR/>God also is not empirically demonstrateable, I'll grant you that as well. Even those of us who claim some sort of religious experience do not hold that the experience we have had is a sort of empirical experience. Even those of us who claim to have experience God do not (I hope, for their sake) claim to have experienced the entirity of God, or any quantifiable portion of God (as though God could be divided up and studied).<BR/><BR/>The existence of God, then, cannot be proven. I will grant you that as well, and will not burden you with any bad proof. People believe or disbelieve for personal reasons. Personally I have as many reasons to disbelieve as I do to believe. Religious people can be extraordinarily intellectually dishonest. Such dishonesty would be manifest in me if I told you, for instance, that I had such compelling reasons for my faith that I consider it to be the only rational position. I'm sure you've heard that line before.<BR/><BR/>As the former pastor of a fundamentalist church I have seen such destructive dishonesty at work. For questioning, for instance, that church's belief that the flood in New Orleans was evidence of God's wrath against that city for its manifold sins and wickedness (ala Sodom and Gomoreah) I was called an agent of Satan sent to deceive the church.<BR/><BR/>But, for my all my reasons to disbelieve, I have at least as many reasons to believe. In my own life, my experience of God (which does not demonstrate that there is a God) humbles me, and teaches me that while so many things in this world are out of <EM>my</EM> control, they are not spiralling out of control. My experience of God teaches me to have compassion on all living creatures, as they participate in the way in which God is made incarnate in creation. My experience of God teaches me to trust that love triumphs over hate, that compassion triumphs over condemnation, that justice triumphs over tyranny, and that grace and mercy triumph over legalism.<BR/><BR/>This too, of course, does not <EM>prove</EM> God's existence. I can "do justly, love mercy and walk humbly" whether or not I believe that there is a God standing behind that scripture from Micah. I can be a good person and live a decent, meaning-filled life even if there is no God as either the moral enforcement mechanism or fundamental meaning behind the universe.<BR/><BR/>But I choose to believe in God for the novel reason that it makes sense out of my experience of life. My faith enters into my chaos and creates order. It steps into my nihilistic tendencies and produces meaning. <BR/><BR/>My belief does not demonstrate the objective existence of God. My reasons for it are subjective rather than objective, and emotional rather than rational. But since the arguments for and against God are a wash, and since my faith does so much for me, I would be a fool to abandon my religious journey or my religious experience just because I found out that the arguments I bought as a teenager have some pretty damn good rebuttals.<BR/><BR/>Again, I am sorry for your experience with the Christian faith. I have been burned, too. And I'm also sorry that I cannot provide you with anything like the certainty I had as a child. The best I can say is that in the worst experiences of my life, as I was being burned by people who claimed to serve the same God I thought I was serving, I turned to that which I identify as God and was for once not let down.Sandalstrapshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16303641009581382217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21219785.post-1142360240245218612006-03-14T13:17:00.000-05:002006-03-14T13:17:00.000-05:00paul manata – never hesitate to keep me honest. Be...paul manata – never hesitate to keep me honest. Being human I have been wrong before. Admittedly, I like to think rarely, but still very possible!<BR/><BR/><I>Surely the police would not have a problem if one witness left something out that another included! If one included a detail that the other felt not important to mention, for their own reasons, the police would not think, "contradiction!"</I> Oh my no. Police (and lawyers questioning witnesses) are very interested in what facts people leave out. Some of the best testimony comes from people leaving things out in bar fight cases. The Victim testifies the Defendant started it. The Defendant testifies the Victim started it. One onlooker says the Defendant threw a shot glass, one says he threw a punch and another says he swung a pool stick. (Yes, they truly ARE that varied!)<BR/><BR/>All of the Defendant’s friends say, “Nothing happened.” The police do not shrug, figuring some detail is “left out” because it was not important to mention. They think there might be a problem.<BR/><BR/>To be fair, you may not have known what I was talking about with the God/Satan thing. David’s Census. 2 Sam. 24 says God incited David to take it. 1 Chron. 21 says Satan did, and 1 Chron. 27 says nobody did. Understand that this crime was so bad, that God’s justice system (whatever that is) required a punishment of 100,000 – 200,000 people!<BR/><BR/>Witness 1: Officer I saw the whole thing. God forced incited that David fellow to do the whole thing. I didn’t see Satan, but I sure saw God. And God was angry, too.<BR/>Witness 2: No, <B>/I</B> saw the whole thing. God wasn’t there at all. Satan, God’s biggest enemy was the one that incited David. It was only then that God got mad.<BR/>Witness 3: Are you two nuts? There was no God, no Satan, no David at all. It was Joab that did it.<BR/><BR/>While witnesses may leave out details that other witnesses fill in, it is inconceivable that one would notice God and not Satan, another Satan, but not God, and a third wouldn’t see either. Or even David.DagoodShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04557451438888314932noreply@blogger.com